Tales of Symphonia Chronicles HD Will Have Dual Audio

Tales of Symphonia Chronicles HD will have dual audio voice tracks for the first time in the history of the Tales series, Namco Bandai have announced.

“We are extremely excited to announce that Japanese voiceovers will be implemented for the first time ever in a European release of a Tales of title, in the upcoming Tales of Symphonia Chronicles,” said Olivier Comte, Senior Vice-President at Namco Bandai Games Europe. “We know this feature has been strongly awaited by the fans, and we are really pleased to be able to make this happen finally.”

In addition to English and Japanese audio, Tales of Symphonia Chronicles HD will be subtitled in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

As previously reported, Tales of Symphonia Chronicles HD contains Tales of Symphonia and its sequel, Dawn of the New World, with updated HD visuals. The compilation will be released in the west sometime in 2014.

There is nothing wrong with you wanting to play it in Japanese. If you wanted to play all your games in Swahili I wouldn’t care. It’s the fact that you write you still wouldn’t buy the game, even though it will come over as dual audio, in the west because you bought all the other iterations in Japanese.

Carabutifarra

Again, and what’s wrong with it? I will buy the game in Japan, because I want to play the game with Japanese Voices and Japanese Subs., there are a lot of people who love the japanese voices like me but they don’t know Japanese, this is a great news, this is a great news for them, and I’m happy because Namco listen us.

Edit: I’m not going to reply to this matter since anymore replies won’t lead this discussion anywhere, etc.

James Williams

There’s nothing wrong with importing the JP title at all!
But think about the sales too, if you bought it in your country it might help the sales move along more and we’ll get more titles with these features in the future.

raito_89

I live in Asia. It doesn’t inflict any sales improvement for my country even though i buy the EU or NA version… again playing in Japanese voice with their subs is nothing wrong if you don’t have problem understanding it. I do like their decision for dual voice so my other friends that like the JP voice can enjoy it. Not to mention they release like half the year early.

Ehren Rivers

*any fanbase :P

Kai2591

That’s generalizing it too much, especially since it came from just one person…
I, for one, am extremely happy about this, and will buy the European version xD

Usually the japanese version has a superior CE. So even if the localization brings dual audio it pales in comparison with the goodies the JP version brings. Some also are too impatient and don’t want to wait a year for localization.

Tales Fanbase will never be happy until… Let’s not talk about it, since it will never happen.

CirnoLakes

I don’t think that’s the case. To be honest, Tales fans have long had many things to complain about.

For several years we went without getting any new Tales games localized. A few years ago Japan was getting new Tales game after new Tales game. But we weren’t seeing any of them. It was suddenly a wasteland after Tales of Vesperia was released.

Japan got Tales of Graces, Tales of the Tempest, Tales of Innocence, Tales of Hearts, Tales of Xillia, Tales of Xillia 2. And for the longest time, we got nothing.

And the last game that the West got, Tales of Vesperia, was incomplete. The game was later ported to the PlayStation 3, and got all sorts of bonus content, but we didn’t see any of it.

It was pretty frustrating.

You can count me in as one of those “complaining” Tales fans. But I don’t complain for the sake of complaining. I very much legitimately care about dual audio with franchises like Tales. And I hugely, massively miss Patty Fleur in Tales of Vesperia. To the point I hardly ever play my XBOX 360 copy anymore.

Let me say, having one less thing to complain about is not a complaint from me. It’s a dream come true. I feel extremely satisfied today. Some of us may look like we complain for the sake of complaining. But we don’t. I, for one, am so happy today.

Nekros

There’s 3 sects of the Tales or in general, the JRPG fanbase in the west. One wants dual audio, one couldn’t care less, one would rather listen to the dubs. You can’t please the 2 extremes as adding subs and the licensing deals needed for the original voice track would take up precious resources when porting a game.

hunterrnl

I know something they wanna complain about :). Its starts with a V :P

I dont really mind Dual Audio any extra is always good :D. Will this be my last game for the PS3 or will there still come great JRPG`s :D.

pimpalicious

Only thing I complain about sometimes is games I want not getting localized. I would still like to play Destiny 2 and Rebirth. Not strongly though, better that we get some than none.

Yggdr5

The tales fanbase is really the worst. I’m totally happy and glad that there is finally dual-audio, but what are you “we don’t need dual-audio” guys doing? Complaining for the sake of complaining. Tell me again how you are any better than us?

Alexander Marquis Starkey

That the thing. We have been buying the games for years, regardless of Dual Audio, because we like the Tales games. We didn’t need Dual Audio to enjoy them. There are people who didn’t even bother to check out the series because it didn’t have Dual Audio. I know it sounds seriously jerkish, but IMO, it makes me feel like they aren’t fans of the Tales series and just came because a game finally added dual audio.

As for the western fans being an unpleaseable fanbase, I don’t see what you mean as most of us know and recognize weak points of these games, all have different opinions on which games did the gameplay mechanics best, and the general opinion is that stories are never really stellar. They start off well, then as you get further in, depending on which game and the person playing, it goes from anywhere to being meh to alright.

Oh wow! I wasn’t interested in this before, but maybe now I’ll have to give it a replay. I had to turn all the voices off when I played through Symphonia on Gamecube, and even then they sometimes played anyway…

Letiumtide

Finally, yes, this means that the skits will be voiced!

edit: Oddly, I just noticed that at the top for region designation it’s USA instead of North America, which bugs me a little as a Canadian.

Jesse

The skits were voiced in the US versions of Dawn of the New World and Graces f, as well.

Letiumtide

Yes, I’m aware that current Tales games actually have voiced skits. I should mention I’m specifically talking about the one that didn’t or rather the only game I’ll be playing in this collection. Tales of Symphonia as the Gamecube version for the US did not have voiced skits, but in the Japanese version it does.

Sorry. I should have clarified.

Jesse

Oh, ok.

Spirit Macardi

Just watch, next people will complain that there’s no option for Japanese text x3

Maumac77

Not a complaint, but I would have liked it. However that’s only because I’ve started learning the language recently, and translating characters is apparently the hardest part for me :|

Leon_Tekashi

Oh, I can totally see that happening soon. lol

Aoshi00

It’s not really a complaint.. but it really is better to have all the text and audio all in one, say RE Revelations, Alan Wake, Lost Odyssey, BlazBlue, P4 Arena, etc, they really cramped audio/text for many languages in there. It could be done, just whether they want to do it or not. Personally it’s easier for me to listen to Jpn audio w/ Jpn text and Eng audio w/ Eng. text. Since I really need closed caption instead of subtitles.. I always have sub on playing games or watching movies..

And this is certainly a historic first for Tales..

For many US games, they have audio/text for Eng/French/Spanish/Portuguese, but for Jpn ver it’s usually text/audio in Eng/Jpn for Western games (the Last of Us, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, etc).. Like Muramasa Rebirth on Vita, it would be great if it has Jpn text option too, but I hadthe Jpn Wii ver… but dual audio/text is very convenient and perfect, saves money for double dipping..

As long as all the skits have voices in the Japanese audio, I’ll be using that.

British_Otaku

This is new to the Tales series? I agree that it’s brilliant, especially if the skits are voiced, I felt cheated having Tales of the Abyss come late to Europe on the 3DS, with a vocal-less intro and skits which aren’t voiced (I see that Japan voiced everything).

It should be the standard, if only because I like hearing both and the skits aren’t voiced frequently enough.

Alexander Marquis Starkey

All games since Tales of Vesperia have had voiced skits…which in the west only include Vesperia, Graces and Xillia.

Ultimaniacx4

Excellent news.

As an aside, anyone else appreciate the irony of people complaining about wanting to hear complaints about good news?

abysswalker

Guess we’ll never have a Tales post without complaints

JustThisOne

Haha, yeah. It’s a learned fear.

Maumac77

I’m not all that surprised seeing that it uses the PS2 version of the game. Probably would be easier to just add subtitles rather than voicing all the extra stuff. However, I am glad since I can play Dawn of the New world with liking the characters voices more. Although it’s funny how I wished the original Japanese text was in it. Would have been great to use that for practice

fireguardiancoty

There isn’t a lot to voice. If they don’t decide to do skits, then all it’d be is artes, which there aren’t many of.

…..what? WHAT? WHAT?!!!! WHAAAAATTT?!!!! OMG I’M GONNA CRY THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!!!!! T_T NOW I DON’T NEED TO BUY TWO SEPERATE REGION COPIES AND OMG OMG I NEVER THOUGHT THE DAY WOULD COME SO SOON!!!!! Now I get to hear Nana Mizuki as Colette and maybe this means TOX2 will also have dual audio and omg I’m so happy right now…
I think I just died and went to heaven…Oh man, this is unbelievable. They finally did it, finally! I might just buy two copies to support it! I love you, Baba-san. <3 THANK YOU!! I love you all; here, I'll give everyone a hug!
(Also not that I disliked the dub, but this is a great step forward)

For this game maybe, but thanks to this game having it, I’m pretty sure there will be alot more whining than usually if next Tales won’t have dual-audio too.

Rirath

Great, great news. Long overdue for these types of games.

But a small pet peeve of mine with stuff like this is that the subs are usually based off the English track, which is usually not quite the same. So, what they’re saying (in Japanese) doesn’t quite match what you’re reading (in English) at times. If you know some Japanese, but not enough to get by without subs, it can be a bit annoying.

Nekros

I believe that’s mostly because there are many Japanese jokes that simply don’t translate well into English and vice versa.

Rirath

Great, great news. Long overdue for these types of games.

But a small pet peeve of mine with stuff like this is that the subs are usually based off the English track, which is usually not quite the same. So, what they’re saying (in Japanese) doesn’t quite match what you’re reading (in English) at times. If you know some Japanese, but not enough to get by without subs, it can be a bit annoying.

I’m sorry, but of course it would have been. But please wait till the 6th to see what other news Baba-san is announcing.

Nightmare637

Hope this doesen’t backfire in the future.

Rogerrmark

Hopefully this is not the good news Baba was talking about. Even if its good.

Barrylocke89

I’m fine with either version, but I love having options.

But the MOST IMPORTANT thing about this new addition: Dual Audio means VOICED SKITS in Symphonia! The lack of voiced skits bothered me a lot more than no Dual Audio, but if there’s Japanese audio then you’ll be able to get voiced skits at least in the Japanese version (and who knows, maybe the American VA will have it too)

Zoozbuh

YAY, VOICED SKITS! They add so much for me. Like, the skits in Tales of Graces F turned it from “good” to “amazing” for me. PEOPLE DON’T EVEN KNOW.

Istillduno

HOLY ****

Man I was totally going to skip on this since I still have my gamecube version but now it’s just a no brainer, even though I found the dub decent enough I’ll pick this up to show support for dual audio in Tales games.

It’ll also be nice to be able to look up the origional cast now, always avoided it before so I wouldn’t get dissapointed if one of my favourite voice actors was in it.

Demeanor

AT LAST some sense from this company!!! Not only we are getting localizations (togf, tox, this) but even the ultimate chimera of dual va! I’m overjoyed by this. ^ ^ now let’s just hope this becomes the standard like with nisa titles. I will DEFINITELY buy the eu LE/CE/whatever in light of this announcement. Posting from my holiday in Paris btw ^ ^
Lets see if I can thank Baba in person at the Japan Expo ^ ^

fireemblembeast

*Looks outside to see if pigs are flying*

Nightmare637

*lights pig shaped fireworks* happy 4th!

fireemblembeast

XD clever

ZEROthefirst

And on this day all of the tales “fans” that felt they were entitled to dual audio were satisfied… until the next game that comes out without dual audio, then the whining begins again.

Nekros

The way to make sure that doesnt happen is to go out and buy 10 copies of this game to show people want dual audio ;p

Misty Dawson

Bleh. Who cares.

Jesse

Sighs at the people who are only buying it BECAUSE of this.

AkuLord3

And the hurrays for people who aren’t and just getting it because favorite game…LIKE ME. This is just a bonus i’m ok with.

My face will be like that for the whole day, after reading this article.

I’m…I’m just so happy. I hope they will do something like this for the new ones as well.

Nitraion

Ok he finally open pandora’s box….
I dunno what happen in the future…

Rogerrmark

Tales fans becoming nastier and more annoying than Atelier’s western fanbase is all I can think at the moment :P

Nitraion

Once open the box never close it again
OR Thou Shall Be CURSED FOREVER…..

Will Jay

Very nice, but I’d like to know if the English voice track will remain the same as the original release, or if it’ll be re-recorded. Or what’ll happen to the new artes from the PS2 version which are being added, will they be unvoiced, dubbed by sound-alikes, were the new artes perhaps voiced on the disk of the GC game but not implemented, or maybe they might actually spring the cash to get back the original voice actors who were union actors or have gone union and maybe even do the skits?

The original dub was near perfect outside of the unvoiced skits if you ask me. No one but Scott Menville can do Lloyd to me.

X_Bacon

I’ve been wondering that too, though I don’t really think they would leave it unvoiced.

And I really missed Scott Menville and Jennifer Hale in the sequel. :(

s6_miller

Awesome! I hope they manage to get the original VA to do the skits now.

One step at a time, soon, hopefully, we’ll get international releases.

X_Bacon

Amen, comrade.

Farid Belkacemi

Finally… Great news ! :)

Ni

I don’t know if doing this is a good idea at all…

EX+

SWEET. This’ll take up my time before FFXV comes out.

James Williams

I hope it’s going to take up ALOT of your time, XV isn’t going to be for another 2 years minimum.

EX+

Not sure. Nomura seems confident that XV will be coming out sooner rather than later. I’m thinking late 2014. KH3 oh hell yh I know that’s gonna be 2015 earliest.

GVmanX

Any confirmation on the US version having this?

Chris Yuen

The post is tagged under both Europe and US. Also, Chronicles HD is the name for the localized version. The Japanese version of the two games combined that’s coming in Oct is called the Unisonant Pack.

mirumu

I expect this will definitely help the game in Europe. They like games a bit more multi-lingual.

宮野志保

Alright I guess i’ll be the first one and get the complaining started =D

Has anyone here actually played TOS and TOSR?
The animation/lip-synching for the skits in the Japanese and English versions of the games are programmed very differently to match the corresponding voice overs, to a point where they actually have different lengths.
So I’m not sure how they’re gonna do this , other than to have two separate program tracks as well, to match both the voice overs.
If they’re going to force the JP voice over onto the English game animation program (or vice versa)…it’ll end up looking like a clusterf*ck…
(see the undub versions of both TOS and TOSR….)

mirumu

Games always used to be that way with the voices slightly out of sync. That said, how easy it is to fix will depend how they implemented the lip sync. If it’s just a timed script then they just need to include scripts for both languages and switch between them as appropriate.

Just off the top of my head, if I was implementing lip sync in code I’d be inclined to try driving the lip movements off the audio directly. Some fairly simple signal processing code would be enough to get lip movements at least roughly in sync I expect.

Of course any pre-rendered video would be a pain to deal with. I guess on a PS3 disc they would have enough space to just include both versions.

As I recall, the original ToS had way higher-quality voice acting than you would expect from a goofy animu game – Namco really bent over backwards to give it the premium treatment back in the day. So if I get this, I doubt I’ll feel the urge to switch language tracks.

Tim

LoL didn’t expect that at all, I really thought that BAMCO is way too stubborn to listen to fans plea but that’s good news anyway because now I can finally buy my first HD tales games, I was planning to buy Xillia & then I learn that it wont have dual audio & for me that means a PASS, unless they decide to add Japanese VO later with some DLC else not interested.

pimpalicious

I had no problem with dub only but it’s nice to have options and hear both now. So I wonder if we’ll ever see this for the Final Fantasy series?

Yan Zhao

Its about damn time they include JP audio for us.

Too bad its on a re-release and not on the newer Tales games like Graces F or Xillia.

Oh well, its a start I guess.

David García Abril

Wait! Are you telling me that now I can listen to Collette speaking with the voices of both Nana Mizuki AND Heather Hogan.

EPIC WIN!!! ^_^

Martian Wong

What about US? Or Europe only?

MrTyrant

Ok ok, I’ll buy it. Having the original dub is enough to replay it again.

Bam! Dual audio has arrived! Actually, I’m just happy to have both the Symphonia games in HD!

Ouch My Head Said Dionysus

Guess you guys need to find something else to complain about now.

l777l

The weather has been fairly bad.

Nightmare637

I just set my hand on fire.

Zoozbuh

I kinda hate the Tales fanbase… And J-RPG fanbase in general. There’s just no pleasing some people. Personally I like the dubs, and I think they’ve been improving a LOT in recent years… It takes a lot of work to localise these kind of lengthy games, and we should support localisations instead of acting so entitled about trivial things.

Hyosuke575

This is great news, get’s me really excited and I’ll be throwing my money at this game when it comes stateside. I would just like to know the reason behind dual audio being such a problem. Is it the voice actors, cost, space? I’m just really curious on the reason. (No I”m not complaining)

Alexander Marquis Starkey

Licensing, costs, budget, actors choices of if they even want their voice used used outside of Japan, and sometimes they won’t budge even if you paid them, there is a post from Xseed forums concerning it but I’d have to dig it out.

Keko

That’s it. Day-1 buy.

I love me some Hiro Shimono x Rie Kugimiya.

Ladius

It’s great to see how Namco and Hideo Baba have been trying really hard to please the fanbase in the last two years, I really hope the sales of Xillia and Symphonia Chronicles are enough to make their efforts worthwile.

Kai2591

I….I cried.

CirnoLakes

It’s a dream come true.

vileBrenman

I’m just happy that it’s coming to the states! Really wanna play both these games since I never got the gamecube version.

Kai2591

“Tales of Symphonia Chronicles HD Will Have Dual Audio”

The words ‘Dual Audio’ is ringing in my head even now…

LDM

I personally prefer my games in English, but this is a win-win for everyone!

Yoshi Haku

Good news, but im just reading “implemented in the European release”, hope to see the dual audio in the American release as well.

Ladius

Don’t worry, they will be the same. The only thing the American edition could miss is the Multi 5 localization, and even that is debatable since they could go with a single build for both markets.

Guest

If the American release also includes dual audio, I will switch to Japanese for both games.

AlphaSixNine

Today was a good day,

Crazy_O

YES FINALLY.

I’m so buying this. Thank you all for your constant complaining, WE DID IT :D

CirnoLakes

So much good Tales news. Oh I am so happy they made this decision.

This is one of the things we Tales fans have long wanted the very most. I had been beginning to lose hope. Year after year of no dual audio. What a wonderful thing.

Oh, I hope this sort of thing continues. This is the most wonderful of precedents.

This is one of the only things I’ve ever truly wanted from Tales but never got to have. I’m so happy I don’t even know how to say it.

Ephidiel

Europe only? ^_~

Alexander Marquis Starkey

See, all you folks have been talking about how the Tales fanbase has been complaining about the lack of dual audio, yet Tales fans who regularly buy the Tales releases we do get love the English Voice Acting because since they’ve started doing English dubs, Tales dubs have been great. The only people I see complaining about Japanese Audio, are those who don’t like English Audio, and since Localized Tales games have always had English Audio, are those who didn’t buy the games in the first place because they didn’t have Japanese Voice Audio. So adding it to the game may be nice for them, but in the case that this was a special case, (and it is) if and when that’s not present in a future Tales game, those players will be leaving again because they didn’t come for the game, they came for the audio.

I think this is pretty good news! I myself think that every j-rpg should have dual audio, since I appreciate to hear the original VAs, but can’t understand japanese. My only concern is about newer localized Tales games lacking dual audio, so the fans will complain even more (and in this case I’ll agree with them).

Inuyakira

YESS!!! …But.. BUT!!! Will we get the Japanese opening too??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Untouched !!!!!! AND all 3 of them!!!!!!!!!! ….if not then I’ll have to import the japanese version… again..!! on top of obligatory buying the translate version of course!!! But I’m very glad that I’ll finally be able to finish TOS in Japanese voice over!! i couldn’t fully really get into my Japanese TOS version for GC, at that time. And i mostly bought it for the opening and the sound test!! (which was removed for the NTSC-US version….) LETS HOPE!!!!!! I need the Starry Heaven 2013 by misuno!!!!! in my game!! Then i will be in heaven!!

Elvick

Good news. I loved the dub in the original, but I hated it in DotNW.

xxvaynxx

i don’t understand why ppl like to listen to the jp voice over so much :o the english voice overs are rly good for the tales series…i think so :T but its cool if u like the japanese voices ^^ im not judging or anything so don’t all offended i don’t rly care if u like the japanese voices but i prefer the english voice cuz “for me”listening to something i can’t rly understand annoys me XD and i don’t wanta read the effin subs the whole time lol,anyway thats just me,so again don’t get all offended cuz i know how “most”<—- of you dub hating tales fans/anime gamers are XD

Sawit Sukheviriya

this’ll be the last time i argue about this topic. Do you watch anime in dub or sub?, Do you like seiyuu’s voice?. i don’t mind playing game like MGS or RE with English voice, but for game with a feeling of anime theme like tales series, it’ll be only sub for me.